1935 had some great movies, with the 1936 Academy Awards giving Oscars for some important films including: Mutiny on the Bounty, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Informer, so it is no surprise the only Ocsar “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer” could claim was for ‘Best Assistant Director’. Films that were nominated but got nothing included: Les Misérables, Top Hat, David Copperfield, and Captain Blood. The quality of that competition speaks to how good ‘Lancer’ is (or at least was for the time).

From wikipedia:

Critic Otis Ferguson said he was “taken by the show, imperialism and all.” Andre Sennwald of The New York Times said the film “glorified the British Empire better than any film produced in Britain for that purpose.” Sennwald added that Paramount’s “Kiplingesque” movie “ought to prove a blessing to Downing Street.” The film proved so popular in the United States that it spurred a series of imperial films that continued throughout the decade and into the next decade.

Like actual warfare, most of the film is spent far from the battlefields. There are scenes discussing strategy, hanging out in the barracks, doing chores and so on, This is sure to bore the modern audience that expects action movies to be an orchestrated ballet of adrenaline and destruction. Instead, there is a lot of talk about what sort of leader the Colonel is. There is fighting and some other action, but the film is examining a group of men at different stages of life, how they act and how they see one another.

So complain about the Imperialism, complain about the grammar of the title, “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer”, and complain that the only thing it shares with the source book is its title, but give the film credit for being a groundbreaking ‘talkie’ adventure.